Saturday, December 5, 2015

Covenants Defined Part VIII - An Analysis of the New Covenant

For reference, here are the four promises mentioned in
Jeremiah again:

I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts (Jer 31:33, Heb 8:10).

I shall be their God, and they
shall be My people (Jer 31:33, Heb 8:10).

They shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his
brother, saying, “Know the LORD”: for they shall all know Me, from the least of
them to the greatest (Jer 31:34, Heb 8:11)

I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more (Jer 31:34, Rom 11:27, Heb
8:12).

The first thing that jumps out is
that this covenant clocks in at a puny 145 words (including historic preamble) which
is remarkably abbreviated from what
you’d normally expect. Sinai had a huge
list of requirements that took up chapters of the Bible and was inaugurated
over the course of days, but here
we’re given only a quick mention in one of the prophetic books before moving on
to Nebuchadnezzar.
I’m forced to conclude from this that the people were already primed for
understanding the new covenant and needed only a small confirmation to grasp it,
which means any explanation we have ought to be similarly straightforward and
easy to understand. That’s why, as far as I can tell, there are two ways to
understand this passage: either the covenant is predominately concerned about
personal salvation (a position generally held by Baptists), or it concerns a
new priesthood (generally held by Presbyterians).

The Subjective View

Unlike the mixed multitude in the
Old Covenant who proved unfaithful at every turn, the four promises which
compose the New Covenant establish a people who remain eternally faithful to
God no matter what. The easiest way to see this is to work backwards through
the text, so we’ll start with the last promise first.

Promise four is an explicit, easy
to understand statement about how God will forgive the iniquity of those who
are within the covenant. It is, in other words, justification. And because we
know that justification is a gift given only to the elect, it must be the case
that only the elect are in mind in regarding the other three promises.

The third promise is
regeneration, another work of grace exclusive to the elect. Now, thanks to this
new covenant, God will cause His people to be born again into a living hope,
just as it says in John 6:44-45, “No man can come to Me, unless the Father who
has sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. As it is
written in the prophets, ‘And they shall be all taught by God.’ Every man
therefore who has heard, and has learned of the Father, comes to Me.”

Promise two concerns what the New
Testament calls adoption—although it’s couched in Old Testament terminology
because until Christ the Fatherhood of God is not revealed. This promise is the
outworking of forgiveness found in promise four; it’s the direct result of
receiving the pronouncement of ‘not guilty’ from God, and it teaches us that at
the moment of faith the elect are not only forgiven but reconciled, and drawn
into a right relationship with God. As it says in Rev 21:7, “He that overcomes
shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”

Finally, the first promise
regards our sanctification and growing in grace. After we have been justified,
adopted, and regenerated we are made progressively more holy as we keep the law
in love. We abide in Him and His revelation, walking willingly with Him in
joyful obedience.

Together these four promises
encompass all of salvation, their sum and substance is that in the New Covenant
God is going to cause His elect to obey His law, become born again, become His
people, and be forgiven. And because we know that justification and
regeneration are reserved for the elect, it must be the case that the entirety
of the new covenant is reserved for, and concerns, the salvation of the elect.

For clarity’s sake, take a look
at the chart below, which lists all the explicit covenants in the Bible and how
I think they’re related.

On the left side are the direct
promises of Christ (“Seed”) and what they teach us about Him, colored in red.
In the middle are the types and shadows that teach us something about Christ
but are not explicitly about Him, things like the sacrificial system, the
Passover, or the priests. These are colored green. On the right, colored
purple, are the things that endure and teach us about our need for a savior. So
while strictly speaking the covenant at Sinai was about delivering the Ten
Commandments which are the enduring moral laws, it also established the civil
and ceremonial laws peculiar to the Jewish people, things like dietary and
clothing restrictions. In all cases the shadows come to an end as the kings go
into exile at Babylon, and the destruction of the temple ends the Levitical priesthood
in 70 AD.
Notice that the New Covenant, which is union with Christ, brings together all
the other covenants. In it we see that Christ is the prophet, the priest, and
the king, and in it we are united to Him as our covenant head.

As a side note I’ve chosen to
organize the diagram this way because Matthew in his genealogy marks three
eras: Abraham to David, David to Exile, and Exile to Christ. The left side
shows this (more or less). In Romans Paul makes two divisions, Adam to the Law,
and the Law to Christ, which I think the right side shows too.

The Objective View

Unlike the Old Covenant which had
sinful human priests making offerings which had no chance to take away sins,
the New Covenant promises a priest who will once and for all cleanse the people.
In one sense this is broader in scope than the previous view in that it looks
not just at salvation but at all of the Levitical duties, but in another sense
it’s much narrower in that it’s a covenant,
and therefore a revelation about Christ. However, while this view is
principally objective, it does also indirectly carry with it the subjective
element of the people.
This view is more naturally understood from top to bottom, so we’ll work
through the promises as they come.

The first promise is a throwback
to when Moses delivered the law to the people written on breakable stone tablets,
then proceeded to locked them away in a golden box (Deut 10:2) that killed you
upon touching it (2 Sam 6:7), and stuffed both into a dark room (Ex 26:33) that
only the high priest could enter once a year, and then only when he was offering
atonement for sins committed (Heb 9:7). Unlike that event, the new covenant the
laws are going to be delivered directly into the hearts of men, which implies they are going to be the new temple (1
Cor 6:19), the new ark. It also teaches us that this time the giving of the law
is going to be invisible, internal, and its ordinances are not going to be seen,
but unseen (2 Cor 4:18). It also
implies that God Himself is going to be the mediator, the one who delivers the
revelation to men.
This promise is a highlight of the prophetic role of Christ.

The second promise is that God
will be their God. This wording is identical to a previous time in the book,
Jer 11:4, 15:7, where the people were told that if they would obey then
they would be blessed. It’s also in Ex 6:7 as a unilateral promise from God
that He would deliver them from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. The idea here
then is that in the New Covenant the keeping of the law will be accomplished,
and the blessings for keeping it will be poured out. You will not have someone
who tried to keep the law and failed, you will have someone who kept it and
merited its blessings.
This promise highlights the fidelity of Christ and His sinless obedience to the
Law.

The third promise shows us that
there’ll be a rolling back of the duty the Levites to teach their neighbors
about God. Previously our sinfulness made Him unapproachable, and to hear His
voice was to fear for your life (Ex 20:19), so it was only natural that we’d
need a priestly group to go before God lest we be destroyed. But now God’s
going to appear among us, and do away with the requirement the Levites have to
teach us or intercede for us. To this point I think Doug Van Dorn’s “Covenant
Theology, a Reformed Baptist Primer” [locations 1587 through 1617] makes an
excellent argument for the idea that this promise is principally about making
Jesus known throughout history, which culminates in the incarnation. As He said, “Have I
been so long with you and yet you still do not know me Philip? He who’s seen Me
has seen the Father.” (John 14:9).
So promise three concerns a revelation of God that will be unlike anything
previously seen.

This last promise speaks a priest coming to make
an offering that actually succeeds in
removing the wrath of God, and absolving the people of their sins. This is
monumental. Is 42:6, 49:8, and Zech 9:11 teach us that somehow this priest is
going to offer Himself, and through his blood purchase a pardon for men, but
how that works isn’t entirely clear here. Nonetheless the guarantee is ironclad
that God is going to actually forgive
iniquity.

The chart below represents the
objective view of the New Covenant. Notice that it looks almost identical to
the previous one, the only difference being that this new covenant isn’t identical to union with Jesus. It’s arevelation about what Jesus will be like and what He’ll do. That’s
why the gray box that defines covenants ends with the new covenant. You may
understand what the New Covenant teaches about Jesus, but until you come to Him
in faith you are outside of the kingdom and remain unsaved.

Which is Right?

Are we the object of the New
Covenant promises or is Christ? Clearly we are the recipients of this grace no matter which one you pick, but of whom
is the prophet speaking here, himself or someone else? As one who’s always held
the subjective, I now think the objective understanding is superior.

First, it fits with the other covenants
better this way. All the others were chiefly about a revelation of Christ, although
they also contained an element of salvation for the people. But if the new
covenant first and foremost about the plan of salvation for the people and not Christ
then its flip-flopped from every other covenant. So I find the assertion that
in this covenant the shadow is the focus of it to be an underwhelming idea. It
inserts a kind of discontinuity that just doesn’t quite fit.

Secondly, if you take the
objective model as dominant then you largely get the subjective one for free.
If this is about Christ then it’s a quick and easy jump to talk about His work.
To be a savior He needs people to save, to be a priest He needs people to
intercede for, etc. But if we start with the subjective model then we don’t get
the objective in return. This is very similar to the mistake the modern
evangelical church makes in interpreting everything in the Bible as being about
us. If we start with the notion that David and Goliath is a story about how we
can fight the giants in our lives then there isn’t a lot of room for Jesus. But
if we start with the premise that David and Goliath is a story about Jesus then
we can easily find our place in it.

Thirdly, the objective model fits
better with the warning passages found in Hebrews. You might ask, “If the elect
are in mind for this covenant and they are incapable of losing their salvation
then what gives, why warn them?” to which the Baptist would answer “the warning
passages may be hypothetical, but that’s only because they’re the means of keeping
the people saved to begin with. They are how God keeps the elect from falling
away, by warning them of the danger.” And that’s a good answer.

But even so, it makes better sense to
say you can be under the new covenant and not saved by dent of what a covenant
is, and that these are real warning
passages which people actually fall
foul of. It also explains how you can ship wreck your faith, and yet have God
never know you to begin with: falling away from the covenant takes you away
from God, but those in the covenant are not necessarily those united to Christ.
The faith that gets you near to God isn’t the faith that’s needed to save you,
although it’s no less real. It’s the difference between living as a resident in
a country and being a citizen of it.

Fourthly, the
subjective model doesn’t seem quite right to it in how it reduces everything to
be elect specific. If the third promise concerning knowing God is exactly equivalent to regeneration
then the old Testament saints couldn’t be regenerate and must have been keeping
the law in their own power. But we know that men like king Josiah who turned to
God with all his heart (2 Kings 23:35) could only have done that because he was regenerate. That means
that even in the subjective view the covenant must be a revelation about
salvation, and not a promise identical to it. And once you’ve made that
concession it seems the game is over for the subjective side.

Fifthly, and lastly, this makes
more sense given the book of Hebrews. If the function of the New Covenant was
to reveal the savior/priest/prophet in more fullness then you’d expect a book
about it. If however it was about salvation then you’d expect a more
comprehensive treatment about that. But Hebrews proceeds just like the
objective view predicts, it spends most of the time on establishing Jesus a
better mediator than Moses, a better priest than the Levites, and adds an ample
amount of warning that just because you’re under this new revelation doesn’t
mean you’re saved (Heb 10:29). Yet notice also that it drags the subjective
element with it, notice Heb 8:8-9, 12 for example.

Does This Mean the Presbyterians Are Right?

I’m… uh… I think so. I don’t
really like the conclusion honestly. Because if the Baptist model is right then
the New Covenant community are the regenerate, and we apply the sign to the
people who show signs of being regenerate in that they offer a profession of
faith. Case closed. But if the covenant is a framework for salvation then that
notion must be wrong.